Historically, vehicle radio systems have been designed to receive radio broadcasts at different frequencies and within different frequency bands, with a tuner being used to select among the different frequencies and play audio content from the radio broadcast received at the selected frequency. The radio broadcasts can include a variety of different programming content including, for example, news, music, and talk shows. Commercial radio stations use advertisements interspersed throughout the programming content as a source of revenue. These radio advertisements are not specifically targeted to each of the end users; rather, they are targeted only generally, if at all, based on such things as the time of day, content of the contemporaneous programming content, and demographics of the listening audience derived from survey data. These factors are also typically used to determine how much to charge the advertisers for broadcasting the advertisement.
Traditional AM and FM radio broadcasts by a radio station cover only a limited geographic area depending on the strength of the broadcasted signal and the use of repeaters. Much of the programming content for these broadcasts is locally produced or compiled and then broadcasted only within the area covered by the particular radio station. For more widespread distribution of programming content, syndication has become more common, with the syndicated content being transmitted to various, geographically dispersed radio stations which then retransmit that syndicated program. Local advertising may be inserted within this content by the individual radio stations. Television networks provide programming content in a similar fashion, with the content containing advertising slots that can be used by the local affiliates to insert regional advertising.
More recently, other approaches that permit more localized programming and advertising have been proposed. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,163,683 to J. M. Dunn et al. which discloses a broadcast data radio system that uses cellular towers to implement a virtual radio station that is not limited by the geographic range of any single transmitting station. The system broadcasts both analog and digital programming content which can be locally stored and interleaved with broadcasted programming content. This permits the user to maintain reception of the virtual radio station's programming when crossing regional boundaries from one region to another while receiving advertising having locally-specific content.
One disadvantage of these existing approaches to radio broadcasting of programming and advertising is that they do little to improve the targeting of advertising to listeners. Another disadvantage is that they do not provide any means to confirm that the advertising has been delivered to the listener. Accordingly, it is a general object of the invention to enable customization of advertising for vehicle occupants in a manner that better targets the advertising to the listener. It is also an object of the invention to provide a system that can provide confirmation back to the advertiser that a particular advertisement has been played for the listener.